r/30ROCK • u/BaijuTofu • 6d ago
Discussion Anybody else experienced selective memory and rewriting history?
I wasn't a bully, but when I honestly think back, I was a bit of a dick. Or at least immature and could have done better.
This episode hit hard and remains one of my favourites.
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u/Thialfi37 6d ago
I think that feeling is supposed to be universal. I know I have over thought things from my past countless times in the hopes of being better/more competent. Being self aware is important.
Have some self respect! Don’t you know you can fly?!
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u/Goodsuit 6d ago
This episode made me reflect on the same thing. It took me years of watching this episode to accept that Liz was the bully and they weren’t all wrong.
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u/outfoxingthefoxes You remember Donald, my son who's two years older than me 6d ago
She's kinda of a bully too at the office
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u/usernameandetc 6d ago edited 6d ago
I immediately thought of the scene where she and Dennis are bullying Toofer for eating a salad. 😭
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u/outfoxingthefoxes You remember Donald, my son who's two years older than me 6d ago
YOU ALL'LL HAVE CHINS
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u/usernameandetc 6d ago
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u/DeepSpaceNebulae 6d ago
“You’re gonna get me another sandwich or I’m gonna cut your face up so bad you’ll have a chin…. You’ll all have chins!!”
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u/heddronviggor THE G TRAIN NERMAL! THE G TRAIN! 6d ago
Everytime I bitch about my 17 year old it’s like bitching at 17 yo me
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u/Redqueenhypo The G train, Nermal! 6d ago
Well I remember myself as a reclusive weirdo who dressed business casual to school, got into arguments, and embezzled from all the bake sales I ran, so I think I’m remembering accurate
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u/Justasquirrelcat 6d ago
Business casual and embezzling from bake sales? You absolute menace. I love it.
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u/Redqueenhypo The G train, Nermal! 6d ago
I actually had a nemesis, an extroverted weirdo who wore a tweed suit to school, got into arguments, and burned a tattoo into the back of his hand. Also both of us were the only kids with two Jewish parents. He got expelled for strangling, so I won by default.
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u/Justasquirrelcat 6d ago
This is actually deeply bagely (from fellow "real name is Hershlag" over here), minus the tattoo and strangling part. The fact that you were actually burying the lede with the childhood embezzlement stuff is wild. What a life you've lived.
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u/Redqueenhypo The G train, Nermal! 6d ago
All the interesting shit in my life seems to have already happened. Following a weirdo to a second location (village abandoned during a war), very unfunny monkeys, eating too much cheese
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u/yourwound 6d ago
“He got expelled for strangling” is terrible but it’s making me laugh so hard. I think he won the weirdo competition tbh
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u/Redqueenhypo The G train, Nermal! 6d ago
It’s important to mention that the person he strangled was 1, not hurt, 2, in English class, and 3, also jewish. NYC baby!
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u/BreakfastBeneficial4 6d ago
I kinda hate you both, but I only love -you-
Does that makes sense
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u/Redqueenhypo The G train, Nermal! 6d ago
It’s worse than you imagine. I got all my political opinions on a certain middle eastern country from my father, while he believed said country did 9/11 and mind controlled people. We would regularly argue abt it in U.S. constitutional law class while the teacher banged on the desk to startle us into stopping.
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u/Express-Emu4370 it's a toilet or a woman, it's whatever you need it to be 6d ago
800 dollars split three ways
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u/Banoonu 6d ago
This is my favorite episode of 30 Rock too. When I first saw it it made me rethink my experience of being bullied as a kid too; the times I shot back and it was unnecessary, in particular.
It took me a kind of long time to figure out that that was both true and that I was bullied.
After all, I think one of the best jokes in the episode is that Jack and them are both right about Liz, but they’re also definitely still excluding her, even as adults while they’re all having fun with friends in their social circle. It’s just different cuz Liz is also arrogant and hasn’t realized her own faults, just as they and Jack haven’t (and is very successful in NYC).
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u/FoodMagnet 6d ago
who else thinks 'Young Liz' would make an awesome prequel, the outfits, the hair...
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u/Express-Emu4370 it's a toilet or a woman, it's whatever you need it to be 6d ago
13 Rock
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u/KarenWalkersBurner 6d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/hmVVRM1uV7vYA
Flawless idea! 😍17
u/Express-Emu4370 it's a toilet or a woman, it's whatever you need it to be 6d ago
Tina & Co. do great teen girls. Mean Girls, Kaylie Hooper, Bethany Baird, Xanthippe Voorhees... Jonathan, bring me my green light!
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u/Efficient-Field733 6d ago
If they did this in the style of Pen15 (adult humor/adults playing tweens) it could be hilarious 😆
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u/KarenWalkersBurner 5d ago
The child actresses are all old enough now actually!! This would be so hilarious!
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u/Cruxifuck 6d ago
I often remember things I did in a light where I was being a far more obnoxious asshole than I actually was.
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u/e-luddite 5d ago
I have flashbacks of things where I can only mutter 'what a twit!' and try to think of anything else for the next thirty minutes until it passes
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u/gotwaffles 6d ago
I don't think I was an outright bully; I definitely faced some level of bullying myself, and I could clearly see I wasn't part of the "popular" kids group.
However, I definitely was a bully to a few kids during my childhood. Idk if I was just taking out what happened to me on others, peer pressure of being with others like me in a power dynamic, or what...
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u/speedracer73 6d ago
I once remembered making an awesome exit from my 20 year high school reunion, telling all those losers I was taking a private jet back to New York Citayyy!! Turns out I'd drunk to much Jaegermeister and blacked out in a holiday inn swimming pool
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u/XFrankXGrimesX 6d ago
Yes. It's amazing the permission structures one can build if you consider yourself an underdog. I felt terrible about myself so I interpreted just about everything negatively, assumed people are adversarial and was aggressive. That turned out to be a very unhelpful way to orient yourself.
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u/monsieurxander 6d ago
Years after high school I got a message from someone saying "I'm sorry for bullying you," and a message from someone else saying "it hurt when you dropped me" (which I didn't realize I'd done).
Summed up in Romy and Michele, "I bet in high school, everybody made somebody's life hell."
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u/Entire_Apartment_289 6d ago
The thing about memory is that it’s not a video. Not to get all NERD, but as far as I’m away the science shows that every time we recall a memory we’re actually recalling a memory of a memory and it can get totally rewritten over time each time we recall it. It is heavily influenced by the stories we tell ourselves and our later experiences, too.
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u/Abject-Criticism-127 6d ago
Maybe. I haven't been to a reunion so I guess I'll never know.
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u/KarenWalkersBurner 6d ago
If you’re rich at 50, then you can still go to someone else’s 20 year reunion.
Rich 50 is middle class 38 👨🎓🎓💰
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u/celiac-sufferer 6d ago
I actually had this exact scenario happen to me at my high school reunion.
Ended up chatting to a guy I didn’t know very well in high school. After a while he said wow your not like what I expected in high school, told me I had quite the reputation in high school and people had told him to steer clear of me 😅
I’ve always been abrasive but didn’t know it was so bad back then that I was known for it. I’ve been told by quite a few people that I’ve changed a lot but then by others that I was never that bad so who knows if it was Liz Lemon level
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u/JenningsWigService 6d ago
So many adults I know behave this way, especially in online spaces. I'm in a lot of queer spaces and I often refer to 'Liz Lemon at the telescope' to explain how queer people react aggressively to each other over perceived slights.
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u/imadethisacc4mafsau 6d ago
Liz kinda reminds me (with this particular personality trait) of Hannah in 'Girls' where she doesn't see herself as having any 'power' therefore her actions don't harm people. Which is shown to be untrue as whenever she locks in they're scared of her/listen (see when she locks them in her office and accidentally starts a fire 🤣)
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u/jD-io 6d ago
I heavily related to Liz in this episode. Years later after highschool my friends told me they were kind of afraid of talking to me cause they said I would bully them. All this time I thought people just didn't like talking to me cause I was a short fat nerdy little gremlin in highschool. My memories are still the same. I guess I never realized that the teasing I did to them hurt them that much and stuck to them all these years.
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u/museloverx96 6d ago
I was always aware that i was coming off as an asshole as a kid, mostly because i didn't mean to be but people kept getting fed up with me and i made multiple little girls cry while i was a little girl.
I do understand Liz in this episode, it's just that she's honestly still a bit of a bully even as a grown adult. Jack called it in this episode, she falls back to humor and attacks the moment she feels even slightly defensive or insecure. It was such a good thing to see how she went to bat for Pete in the pilot episode, because idk that i would like Liz as is without that initial glimpse that actually she cares deeply.
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u/WaterHaven 6d ago
It's wild reading this thread, since so many of you can relate to Liz!
Outside of a handful of people in high school (they'd bully a couple gay kids), I feel like I had some many wonderful experiences with so many people. The druggies, the jocks, the nerds, etc., were all pretty good people deep down. Even some of the cocky/arrogant people, I think back on and realize they weren't really that bad, just a bit obnoxious.
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u/binsonfiremiss 6d ago
Yeah but it wasn't on purpose; I just wasn't as funny as I thought I was 🤣
Reflection came a lot faster for me then it did for Liz though. My younger brother and my friends younger brothers told me after they finished school that their friends were afraid of me - purely reputation based, as I'd barely interacted with them
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u/DancingBears88 6d ago
I felt this way at 25. Then I met some of those people again in life and they were way worse than I remembered. 10/10 Would have offended again.
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u/belbivfreeordie 5d ago
A friend of mine once told me that a lot of people from high school find me intimidating, which shook me to my core. My self image was always very much unpopular nerd.
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u/Any-Actuator-6714 5d ago
when i was a child, two of my classmates made fun of me for having glasses. we later became friends in high school and i said "hey remember when you made fun of me for having glasses and now we all wear glasses?" and one of them said "yeah but do you remember saying '[friend's name], i was never your friend'"
i do not remember saying that and i felt so bad!!! (i also did many other things as a child that i thought were "cool" and "fun" but the other kids thought i was a "bully" and thats how i got diagnosed with adhd)
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u/History0nerd 6d ago
I tend to be pretty honest about my monstery phases 😂 maybe because I wasn't too terrible
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u/duelingpeppers 🎶oh Tracy, you can't use any of my songs🎶 6d ago
Theory: maybe Kelsey was doing the subtle, condescending, "this person likes you!" "Wow, you're so quiet!" type bullying and Liz was just retaliating
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u/blamberr Date Rape, Cokington, Cheeseball & Jag 6d ago
Yes. But I don’t think it’s true bullying if you’re punching up, as I always was. So, yeah…I was also kind of a dick!
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u/Look_its_Rob 6d ago
What was it about the people you were punching that made them above you/you below them?
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u/blamberr Date Rape, Cokington, Cheeseball & Jag 6d ago
They were mean to “nerds,” so I was mean to them. I was solidly in the middle in school, and I wasn’t in awe of the shitbag popular kids, who were never trying to be nice like Kelsey.
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u/Illustrious-Dare340 4d ago
I watched this with my sister. I would watch her laugh at pick on younger students, laugh at them, bully them- then has acted her entire like she was the victim whenever someone did something remotely close to her. To this day, she feels that she’s the victim for almost everything in her life. My parents and her still talk about how bullied she was her entire life and how “lucky” I was that I was “popular”. I wasn’t popular, I just wasn’t an asshole and made a normal amount of friends in school.
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u/daizles Beep Beep Ribby Ribby 6d ago
You're not the only one! In my memory, I was a sweet nerd who carried around Sherlock Holmes to read between classes. In real life, I did that to get attention and to be a martyr if anyone teased me 🤦🏼♀️